A Pan-European distribution agreement with Great Bay Software Inc., the innovator of Endpoint Profiling for enterprise networks has been announced by Westcon Security, a business unit of Westcon Group (News - Alert) Inc., the premier specialty distributor in networking, convergence, security and mobility.

 

A comprehensive accounting of all available network endpoints, which is considered to be a mandatory step towards a successful NAC or 802.1 X project, is provided by Great Bay Software's solutions.

 

Network devices such as printers, telephones, PCs, patient care systems, etc are discovered by Great Bay's Beacon appliance. Once these items are discovered, they will be classified in different profiles. It will be very much possible after then, to take inventory of this installed base and check new equipment that connects to the network.

 

To authenticate endpoints that are not running a client for NAC or 802.1X, the information stored within the Beacon appliance is leveraged by Juniper Networks UAC, Symantec (News - Alert) NAC and Cisco NAC.

 

 Willem de Haan, vice president security division, Westcon Group Europe commented, 'A comprehensive view of everything connected to the network is absolutely critical to manage a proper network and application security. With Great Bay Software, we are now able to provide to our European resellers a unique solution for Endpoint discovery, 802.X implementation and management, MAC authentication -- enabling them to successfully deploy and extend NAC or support them in any Network Security Projects.'

 

'We're especially excited to partner with Westcon Security in support of Great Bay Software's expanding European operations. Westcon's reach and expertise across Europe's many languages and cultures, and its existing partnerships with some of Great Bay's alliance partners, such as Juniper, are among the many reasons why we're grateful for the opportunity to partner with them,' Steve Pettit, President of Great Bay Software, said.

 

In related news, Westcon Group will mark its 25th anniversary as an innovator in specialty distribution this month. The company has grown to become a $3 billion company that has around 1,600 employees around the globe.